1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electron beam exposure system controlled by a computer, more particularly, it relates to an electron beam exposure system in which movement of a state is continuous.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there have been considerable developments of the electron beam exposure system used for exposing fine patterns during the process of manufacturing VLSI's. In a known electron beam exposure system, a step-and-repeat method is used for exposing fine patterns. In this step-and-repeat method, the exposure by the electron beam is performed at each "main field", which is an area to be exposed. One main field is equal to an effective chip area, and is divided into a plurality of sub fields. In this method, after the exposure of one main field is finished, a stage is moved to a center position of the next field to be exposed and the exposure is started at each sub field in the next field, after adjusting the position of the electron beam. In this case, the position of the electron beam is readjusted by a main deflector consisting of deflection coils and a sub deflector consisting of deflection electrodes, at each field.
In this method, the exposure is interrupted during movement of the stage, and thus a loss of exposure time is incurred.